Last week, many Martinsville residents received nasty postcards. The anonymous smear campaign postcards attack one of the five candidates for City Council.
The front of the postcard has a black-and-white photograph of the candidate; a sentence in white outlined in a red rectangle; and a white arrow pointing to a blue sentence below the red rectangle.
The back of the postcard has instructions on how to vote against that candidate, two sentences against that candidate and the phrase that he or she “cannot be trusted with our rights and our future.”
The return address of the postcard is Reno, Nevada, and the company is Vistaprint, which some organizations around Martinsville use.
There is one clue: A blue box with the white words “Paid for by Citizens for the Future of Martinsville.”
According to Virginia law, the people or groups behind print advertisements must be identified, but who is hiding behind “Citizens for the Future of Martinsville”?
Hmmm … very interesting.
Anyone – you, me, that guy over there – can look up the actual people behind these Political Action Committees (PAC). Just go to the Virginia State Board of Elections website. To get the information we need here, I went to its search of Campaign Finance Reports at https://cfreports.elections.virginia.gov/.
According to Citizens for the Future of Martinsville’s Statement of Organization, the group filed an amended Statement of Organization on Oct. 11. Its SBE-issued Committee ID is PAC-24-00052.
The purpose of the PAC is listed as “Local City Council Election.”
The Treasurer and Principal Custodian of the Books is Heather Toney, whose email address is blankenbakerh@gmail.com and address is in Ridgeway. Fidelity Bank is that Committee’s bank. No one else on that campaign is named.
A PAC is supposed to list which candidate(s) it supports or opposes. Not surprisingly, the purpose of this Committee, according to the form, is solely to oppose the candidate on the postcard.
Here’s where things get interesting.
By law, anyone who contributes $100 or more to a PAC must be listed by name and the amount of his donation(s) listed.
This PAC spent $1,626.17 on Oct. 10 on postcards from Vistaprint, according to its Campaign Finance Report.
Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) lists that Citizens for the Future of Martinsville took in $1,626 in contributions; wow, what a coincidence.
According to Virginia Public Access Project, that $1,626 in contributions was received from exactly 17 unnamed individuals. That averages out to a convenient $95.65 per person – because, of course, anyone who gives more than $100 has to be named.
I called and emailed Heather Blankenbaker Toney, and to her credit, she called back. It was a funny two phone calls, because for a combined 19 minutes, she told me variations of “No comment,” and that if I quoted her she’d take me to court: “You don’t have permission to run anything I’ve said,” she said, several times. (Most people just say, “No comment” and hang up – all in less than 10 seconds.)
I asked who else was on the committee, and who was in charge or if she was in charge, and she did not say. I definitely give her credit for taking one for the team; it is my theory that she was put up to this rather than responsible for it, and she probably never imagined anyone would be calling her to ask about it.
A big point of concern is that any of the other five candidates for City Council might be unjustly accused of sending those nasty postcards. They should not be blamed for this – if one was, that postcard would be delivering a double whammy of unfair smear on one candidate and casting aspersions on another– so I asked Heather if she could at least confirm that none of the other candidates were behind it.
“I’m not going to speak on that,” she said. “I think that’s probably pure speculation. That’s somebody’s opinion and speculation. Hearsay and speculation ain’t factual proof, and that’s two very different things. People can have opinions, they can have speculation – there’s no proof in that. There’s absolutely no proof in that. I’m not answering any questions,” she said.
I do feel sorry for Heather for being the only name in the open behind what now must be a very embarrassing situation to be in the middle of.
Getting ugly usually says more about the speaker than it does the one they are talking about. Friend, when you see a questionable political ad, all you have to do is look up the name behind “Paid for by” and figure out who is behind it (or, at least, you’ll get a name to follow up with).
While you’re at it, why not see where the candidates are getting their campaign money. Knowing who supports them tells you a lot about them, too. Locally, it’s at https://cfreports.elections.virginia.gov/. If you don’t find them at first attempt, try rewording the name to see what you get. In Martinsville, look up Gravely for City Council, Julian R. Mei for Martinsville City Council, Kathy Lawson for City Council, LaNita Herlem for Martinsville City Council and Friends of Candidate John Wilson.
That same information also is on Virginia Public Access Project, which uses the Virginia State Board of Elections information but arranges it in a way that’s easier to make sense of.
